"The wind blows where it chooses . . ." John 3:8

Houston

On the morning of Easter Day, among the crowds of people who came to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston were Angie and Stuart Kensinger, together with their son Philip, who was home briefly from college. This is what I said that morning about Jesus, raised from the dead:

[T]he last word belongs to the Risen Lord. He has destroyed death. He has broken down the gates of hell. And he will set us free from our exile, self-imposed or otherwise. The love of the Risen Lord will not fail us, and we can never find ourselves beyond its reach. . . . This is the joy of Easter.

Less than 24 hours later, Angie and Stuart were killed tragically in the crash of a small plane near the town of Kerrville in West Texas. Four other people were also aboard that plane, all of them friends of the Kensingers. There were no survivors.

Stuart owned a commercial real estate investment and development business. He was a member of the Rector Search Committee that brought me to the Lone Star State and was the Founding Director and Treasurer of Jerusalem Peacebuilders, wholeheartedly supporting its work and commitment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees for Camp Allen in Navasota and the Board of Trustees for Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. Stuart was baptized as an adult by a friend from my time at that seminary, who wrote these words to me last week: “Who knew that Easter’s promise of eternal life to all who love the Lord Jesus would become so dear so fast this Easter Monday?”

Angie was the long-time Head Coach of the Varsity Girls’ Lacrosse Team at St. John’s School in Houston. She had an incredibly encouraging personality, like Stuart did, and made hospitality seem effortless as she opened the door of the Kensinger home to friends, neighbors, and students. I can’t imagine how devastating this loss must be to so many high school girls who played lacrosse and looked to Angie as a second mother through the years. Off the field, she helped them to grow as human beings beyond athletics and worked with her husband to support humanitarian efforts, including the ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury throughout the Anglican Communion around the globe through the Compass Rose Society.

The person most devastated, of course, is their son Philip. He is being surrounded by the love of Jesus though the prayers and presence of so many throughout the City of Houston. I ask you to remember him in your prayers as we gather for the funeral of both of his parents this week. He is a wonderful young adult, in whom is reflected so much of Angie and Stuart — a very strong foundation that will remain with him.

In between hearing about the plane crash and writing this reflection, my wife and I were in New York City for a few days for the annual Mockingbird Conference. I was very aware of the fact that Angie’s great-grandfather, William Jay Gaynor, served as the 94th mayor of that great American city in the early 20th century. In that office, he was a reformer who stood up to political corruption and once wrote these words: “The world does not grow better by force or by the policeman’s club.” I had thought about visiting his grave in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. There was another place, however, beckoning to me in memory of Angie and Stuart — The Cloisters.

I have preached many times about a doorway in that museum that tells Christians a powerful story. It is a story I think the Kensingers embodied in their life together. Last year was the first time I had attempted to see this artistic treasure in person. Although I did make it there last spring, I couldn’t see the doorway because it was hidden from view while some work was being done in the room where it’s exhibited. Only this year, days after the plane crash, was I able to see this with my own eyes.

This beautiful, 12th century doorway comes from the Church of San Leonardo al Frigido in Tuscany, Italy. On the right side of the doorway, there is a sixth century saint named Leonardo, who is depicted as one who cares for those in prison.

The massive lintel across the top of the doorway depicts Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. You can tell it’s Palm Sunday because of the children holding palm branches and throwing garments in the path of Jesus, who is riding on a donkey.

Following Jesus are the twelve apostles plus one extra person. The one extra person is Leonardo, who joins the apostolic train and follows Jesus too. The message seems so simple: Those who pass through that doorway are invited to join the procession of those who follow Jesus. Those who do so are the saints of God. The saints aren’t only people who have died for their faith. The saints aren’t only people who happen to adorn the walls of medieval churches. The saints are people in need of forgiveness, just like you and me, who are willing to walk through that doorway, trusting that it’s better to walk with God, and with brothers and sisters in Christ, than it is to walk alone in this world.

Angie and Stuart were an important part of our congregation at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, and those who make it their spiritual home are called Palmers. While it’s true that the name of our church comes from a family name, the word Palmer also has referred historically to someone who had returned from the Holy Land with a palm frond or leaf as an outward sign of having gone on a pilgrimage. It’s a wonderful metaphor for our life as Christians. Stuart, of course, loved that image as he thought about the people in our church and as he led groups to the Holy Land.

The loss of the Kensingers is overwhelming for our church and the City of Houston. Yet I know both of them would want us to continue to work for peace in a world too often stripped of grace. May the witness of their lives to God’s mercy inspire us all.

Into paradise may the angels lead you.
At your coming may the martyrs receive you,
and bring you into the holy city Jerusalem.

Living in the City of Houston provides us with incredible opportunities to participate in cultural and intellectual events. Throughout the year, I’ll invite you and your friends and neighbors to join me in some of these activities that might either strengthen or challenge us as Christians.

The next “On the Road with the Rector” event will take place on Thursday, January 10, in the Law Building of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which is located at 1001 Bissonnet Street. This is free lecture from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. is titled “’orrible ’istory: A Lighthearted Look at 400 Years of the British Monarchy.” The museum website describes it this way (and notes that seating will be first-come, first-served):

Taking a . . . tongue-in-cheek look at this parade of merrie monarchs are two Brits in Houston: St. John Flynn and Helen Mann, whom many Houstonians may remember as commentators on Houston Public Media’s Manor of Speaking, the talkback show that followed episodes of the PBS series Downton Abbey.

St. John Flynn is the arts and culture director at Houston Public Media, and Helen Mann is the former vice consul for public affairs for the British Consulate General in Houston. The latter is also a fan of Evensong at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church.

Loosen a little our grip, O Lord, on our words and our ways, our fears and our fretfulness, that finding ourselves found in you, we may venture from the safety of the shore and launch afresh into the waters of grace with Christ, the Morning Star, as our guide.[1] Amen.

When I was in college, I remember attending Christmas Eve services at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina. One of the head ushers always stood out on that holy night. And I would have been disappointed if he hadn’t been there. He could be seen marching up and down the aisles in some of the most wonderfully outrageous Christmas trousers you’ve ever seen. It was surely the only time of the year that he would’ve dared to wear such clothing in that church. Of course, he wasn’t alone. There was lots of other playful attire in the pews on people who would normally be dressed rather conservatively, to say the least.

My former boss, who is now the Bishop of Southern Virginia, has a similar, fond memory of a guy who would wear the same socks to one of his former churches every Christmas Eve, showing them off at the door as he greeted the clergy. They were green, with little silver bells all over them, so he would jingle as he walked around. Christmas brought out something playful in him, something of the joy and wonder we see in children and ask God to give to newly baptized Christians.[2]

More than a few of you here tonight understand that sense of playfulness. As usual, our decoy ducks in the fountain in Palmer’s courtyard are all dressed up for the Christmas season with bright red bows around their necks. I’m also sure that there are candy cane neckties, bow ties with lights, Santa pins that play music, and red and green sparkling earrings out there in the darkness, waiting to be noticed with a little grin and a wink. At the last service, two brothers were wearing matching red sweaters with Christmas trees and lights that could blink and sitting together in the first pew, right in front of the pulpit. At this service, one of our ushers is sporting corduroy pants with black Labrador Retrievers adorned with Santa hats on them.

For some people, all of this is a kind of false religion, a form of escape from sadness, sickness, disappointment, and the darkness of the world. For the rest of us, however, it’s a reminder that true joy can be found in the midst of those harsh realities and that, as Isaiah declared, “on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”[3] Yes, the darkness is great, but not greater than God.

The light that dispels our night is Jesus, who came from “the realms of glory” as Emmanuel, which means God-with-us.[4] He has come to share our life not as we wish it to be, but as it really is. He’s forgiven us in spite of our failures and our hard-heartedness. Only a love that comes from above, embracing the unlovely, the unlovable, those who are suffering, those who are lonely, and those who’ve been forgotten is able to make real and everlasting the enchantment of this holy night.

And we believe Jesus embodies that love.

Earlier today at the first Eucharist of Christmas, our beloved Associate Rector, the Rev. Liz Parker, came with her boys, who are young adults, and sat near the front on the Nativity side of the church. As many of you know, she was away from Palmer throughout the season of Advent because her husband, the Rev. Andy Parker, was hospitalized multiple times over the last several weeks due to complications from cancer. Andy died a week before Christmas Day, and his funeral will take place later this week, in this church, while it’s still decorated for this holy season.

At the end of November, after having waited with Andy in the emergency room for 11 hours, Liz said she cried out to God as they sat there, praying, “God, where are you? I need to see you here!” And when they finally got moved into a hospital room, Andy’s nurse introduced himself to them, saying, “My name is Emmanuel.” The same Love that came down at Christmas was in the room with them, surrounding them, comforting them, reminding them of Jesus.

The miracle isn’t that we are only able to see the love of Jesus reflected in a nurse named Emmanuel, but that we also see the love of Jesus in the face of a nurse named Mary, a janitor named Ronnie, a teacher named Eleanor, a waiter named Joseph, a priest named Mollie, a doctor named Carlos, a police officer named Yolanda, a UPS driver named Gabe, a stranger sitting next to us in the pew, and a parent named Clyde, Shirley, Dale, or Linda. Those are real people, by the way, and there are real people in your own life who have shown you the love of Jesus when you needed it.

And the promise isn’t that every story will have a magical ending before the dawn of Christmas morning. No, the promise of the gospel is that God came into the world in a very real way and will always and forever embrace us even through — especially through — our darkest night. What makes this night magical is the belief that “God has intervened” and is, as Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge has written, “[creating] a new kingdom where no evil and no disappointment can ever enter.”[5]

Whenever I think back to the times that my sons, as babies, fell asleep on my chest, I’m reminded of Mary’s newborn child in the manger and that God chose to appear among us not in a blaze of imperial glory but with a different kind of glory, that of an infant. That’s the mystery of the incarnation, which we celebrate tonight.

It’s the unbelievable fact that God said to his creation: “I love you so very much that I’m willing to become like you. I’m willing to experience what you experience, to feel what you feel, to think what you think, to suffer as you suffer, and, yes, even to laugh as you laugh.” It is through becoming one of us that God draws us and the whole world to himself. It is Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

I close with a lovely meditation on the Nativity that I hope is personally meaningful for each of us in this church tonight and for all of those whom our prayers surround with the love of Jesus. It’s written by the 16th-century reformer Martin Luther, who reminds us to laugh and to trust this newborn child more than we trust ourselves:

Behold Christ lying in the lap of his young mother . . . Look at the Child, knowing nothing. Yet all that is belongs to him, that your conscience should not fear but take comfort in him. Doubt nothing. Watch him springing in the lap of the maiden. Laugh with him. Look upon this Lord of Peace and your spirit will be at peace. See how God invites you in many ways. He places before you a Babe with whom you may take refuge. You cannot fear him, for nothing is more appealing to [men and women] than a babe. Are you affrighted? Then come to him, lying in the lap of the fairest and sweetest maid. You will see how great is the divine goodness, which seeks above all else that you should not despair. Trust him! Trust him! Here is the Child in whom is salvation. To me there is no greater consolation given to [humanity] than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breasts of his most gracious mother. Who is there whom this sight would not comfort? Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if you come to this gurgling Babe and believe that he is come, not to judge you, but to save.[6]

To the words of that meditation, I say, “Amen,” and to you,

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

1 BACK TO POST Revelation 22:16, among the Bible’s last words, refers to Jesus as “the bright morning star.”

2 BACK TO POST From the baptismal liturgy in The Book of Common Prayer (1979):

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

Living in the City of Houston provides us with incredible opportunities to participate in cultural and intellectual events. Throughout the year, I’ll invite you and your friends and neighbors to join me in some of these activities that might either strengthen or challenge us as Christians.

The next “On the Road with the Rector” event will take place across the street from Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church at Rice University. It’s a series of presentations about anti-Semitism. See below for details and an explanation of why this is timely.

Lord, we pray for the one who preaches. For you know his sins are many. Amen.

A couple of years ago, on Memorial Day, my family and I took a detour on our way back to Houston from Dallas. We wanted to see the courthouse in Waxahachie, which is the county seat of Ellis County. It appears in the opening shots of the 1984 movie Places in the Heart, which is set in Waxahachie in the middle of the Great Depression. Places in the Heart is an amazing film about reconciliation, both its presence and its absence, with a decidedly Christian frame around that theme.

As we drove up to the courthouse, I could hear with the ears of my imagination the words of an old hymn that’s familiar to many of us being sung in a slow tempo:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

It’s the first thing on the film’s soundtrack as a series of images appear on the screen — the county courthouse; people leaving a church; folks who are poor and homeless; a long, empty dirt road in the country; rusty hopper cars at the edge of town; and a field of bluebonnets that extend all the way to the distant horizon.

Because it was a holiday, the downtown was mostly deserted. So we just walked around the outside of the courthouse, which the author James A. Michener once described in one of his novels as “a fairy tale palace” and “one of the finest buildings in Texas.”[1] Not surprisingly, we walked past a monument on the grounds of the courthouse with a statue of a Confederate soldier at the top of it.

As our two boys walked past that monument without much thought about it, my mind drifted back to the opening of Places in the Heart. With the hymn being sung in the background, another powerful image that one sees are two different families, one white and one black, both sitting down to a meal in their respective homes and giving thanks for the food that is set before them. All of them are dressed in their Sunday best, obviously having gone to worship earlier that morning, albeit within the walls of separate, segregated churches.

As the music fades, the next scene shows another white family doing the same thing. It doesn’t take long for the father to be identified as the local sheriff. He gets called away from his Sunday lunch with his wife and their two children to deal with an emergency down at the rail yard. He takes a couple of biscuits with him, putting them in one of the outer pockets of his suit jacket as he rushes out the door.

By the railroad tracks he finds a young African American boy who had somehow found a bottle of liquor and a pistol. They know one another, and have a friendly conversation. The biscuits and liquor are strange shadows on the Lord’s Day of a kind of holy but incomplete and separate communion.

When the young boy, unsteady on his feet, throws the bottle in the air to try to shoot it, he accidentally shoots the sheriff instead, killing him. Within hours, the young boy would be dead too. Armed white men will tie a rope to him and drag his body through town behind a truck before hanging him from a tree. As the African American singer Billie Holiday recorded in 1939, with lyrics by a Jewish teacher:

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.

Today’s psalm is a different song, assuring us that “the Lord stand[s] round about his people” as “the hills stand about Jerusalem.” It goes on to say that “the scepter of the wicked shall not hold sway over the land allotted to the just.”[2] And yet there are moments in history, in the lives of people we love, and in our own experiences when an honest assessment of the facts on the ground makes that hard to believe. So we cling to the words that follow: “Show your goodness, O Lord . . .”[3] And we add our own words to that prayer, even if we don’t feel brave enough to speak them aloud:

Show your goodness, O Lord, because I can’t see it right now, and I need to see it . . . right . . . now.

More than 4,400 lynchings of African Americans between 1877 and 1950 have been documented. Distinct from other acts of extrajudicial violence, these murders were part of a campaign to reinforce white supremacist beliefs and to terrorize black Americans.[4] You can learn more about this shadow side of American history at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

I recently traveled there with Rabbi Oren Hayon of Congregation Emanu-El, Pastor Michael Dunn of First Christian Church, and Pastor Duane Larson of Christ the King Lutheran Church. Our four congregations, of course, are the four communities of faith that border the campus of Rice University. There are details about that pilgrimage of lament in an article in today’s issue of the Houston Chronicle. But I want to share a story that’s not in the article, which I have permission to retell.

My colleagues and I flew into Birmingham, then rented a small SUV to drive down to Montgomery. While Rabbi Hayon was getting the keys to our vehicle, Pastor Larson and I were standing behind it. So we had a good view of the license plate after the hatchback door was closed. Actually, there wasn’t a license plate. There wasn’t even an official looking cardboard temporary license “plate” that you might see on a new car. No, it was just a sad, slightly curled piece of heavy card stock that said “Tags Applied For.” Immediately, I turned to Pastor Larson and said, only half-jokingly:

You know we’re going to get pulled over for that.

Well, as we drove into Montgomery in the dark of night, we did.

The blue lights came on, flashing in the rear view mirror, and we made our way to the brightly lit nearby parking lot of Goodwill, with Rabbi Hayon in the driver’s seat. So the African American police officer found himself shining his flashlight onto us four white guys. After he heard that it was a rental car, I leaned forward in the back seat to explain that we were a rabbi and three Christian ministers who had traveled together from Houston to visit the new lynching memorial. I even told him what I had said to my Lutheran colleague, pointing to him in the passenger seat, that we were almost certain to get pulled over. Soon enough, we were on our way again.

Later, while we were still heading to the hotel, Rabbi Hayon broke the silence with words that were initially addressed to me. He said:

I’ve been thinking about that conversation with the police officer, and I couldn’t help but notice how natural it was for you to self-disclose your religious identity. I would never do that.

So that’s what we talked about as we continued down the road in the darkness. For me, explaining who we were was almost involuntary, lowering my own anxiety and sincerely trying to help everyone, including the police officer. However, the truth is that I’ve never really had to worry about what kind of prejudices another human being might secretly harbor. But I need to be a lot more aware of others who do.

The Book of Proverbs says that “the rod of anger will fail.”[5] But what if it doesn’t in this one particular instance while I’m on the receiving end of it? Proverbs also assures me that the Lord pleads the cause of the afflicted at the gate of the city. But what if I’m too far away from the gate of justice in the land of the living?

That was our collective reflection on the eve of our seeing the lynching memorial. It was an unanticipated but helpful prelude. There are so many articles that describe the visual impact of the memorial that I won’t try to do that here. I’ll only mention a few of the words that are part of a statement of purpose on a wall on the inside:

For those abandoned by the rule of law. We will remember.

For me, the words of African American theologian James Cone also came to mind. In his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he reflects on the death and resurrection of Jesus, together with the violent murders of these African Americans, and says:

The cross helped me to deal with the brutal legacy of the lynching tree, and the lynching tree helped me to understand the tragic meaning of the cross. . . .

It is the cross that points in the direction of hope, the confidence that there is a dimension to life beyond the reach of the oppressor.[6]

In Places in the Heart, the sheriff’s widow soon finds herself and her two children teetering on the edge of losing everything. And those who mistakenly thought that she’d be happy about the lynching don’t come rushing to her aide. Eventually, she welcomes into her household an African American named Moses, who knows about farming, and a blind man whose extended family no longer wished to be responsible for him. These unlikely companions, each of them, including the children, at a different place on the margins of society, can only survive together. So they create a community that is nothing less than a true reflection of God’s coming kingdom.

The last scene of the movie takes place inside the white church. In the half-filled pews, the congregation can be heard singing the final refrain of “Blessed Assurance.” After the people sit down, the minister reads the famous words of St. Paul about love in the 13th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthian Christians. During that, a man and a woman whose marriage has been strained discretely hold hands. The unspoken gesture of forgiveness brings with it a physical sigh of relief.

Later the minister recalls the words of Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper on the night before his crucifixion. While he’s speaking, the camera follows each member of the congregation passing the bread and wine to the person beside them. What you don’t notice right away is that the pews are now completely filled. All sorts and conditions of people from the town are there, saints and sinners alike.

And the last thing you see is the sheriff’s widow receiving communion from her children. She passes the silver tray that holds the individual cups of wine to the person beside her, whom we’re surprised to see is her husband. He does the same, passing the tray to the young boy who had shot him. And then you see the boy looking directly into the eyes of the sheriff and saying to him, “The peace of God.”

Robert Benton is the man wrote and directed Places in the Heart, and he was born in Waxahachie. He wanted no other ending to the film and once said this about it:

There are certain things images can explain and words cannot. There is something in the image of the man who has been killed handing the communion plate to the boy who killed him that seems very moving to me in ways I cannot explain.

As that final scene of his movie suggests, there are some things that get sorted out in this life and lots more that only get sorted out in the life to come. Nevertheless, sometimes we’re granted a glimpse on earth of things that we believe will only be seen in heaven. The sinfulness of the world seems to keep them beyond our reach.

An example of heaven reaching to earth comes from the Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He’s also an African American whose Baptist father came to church with his Episcopalian mother when they were still dating and living in the heart of segregated America in the 1940s. His father watched his mother walk to the front of the church for communion, kneeling beside white people and drinking from the same cup that they did. His father had never seen whites and blacks drink from the same glass or even the same water fountain.[8]

I hope each of us gets a glimpse of that today. There’s room for us all at this Table. By coming to it week after week, I hope we’ll receive whatever courage we need to look at ourselves and the world around us not as we wish them to be, but as they really are. And I hope, more and more, this household will resemble the household of the sheriff’s widow. That’s what the household of God looks like, a place where the doors of the church are open as wide as the arms of the Crucified One.

We are all related through his blood.

This I believe.

AMEN

1 BACK TO POST James A. Michener, Texas: A Novel (Dial Press: New York, 2014) 1088. Here is the full quote that describes the county courthouse in Waxahachie:

[James Riley] Gordon had built a fairy-tale palace ten stories high, replete with battlements and turrets and spires and soaring clock towers and miniature castles high in the air. It was a bejeweled treasure, yet it was also a sturdy, massive court of judgments, one of the finest buildings in Texas.

4 BACK TO POST That statistic about documented lynchings of African Americans was highlighted at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. I was grateful to learn that Forsyth County, North Carolina, where I was raised, isn’t represented by a steel monument at the memorial. However, “other acts of extrajudicial violence” that fall outside the scope of the memorial did take place in the only documented lynching in Forsyth County. Henry Swaim was a white tenant on the farm of Harrison and Ernestina Reid, and he was lynched in 1884 by “a crowd of between seventy-five and one hundred men, many of whom were masked.”

The only reason that I read about this story is because I was checking to see if there really was no documented lynching of an African American in Forsyth County. The surprising discovery is that Harrison Reid is my first cousin, five generations removed. His wife Ernestina was murdered on May 5, 1884, but whispered three times the name of Henry Swaim as the identity of her attacker before she died.

“Swinging into Eternity” offers a thorough account of what happened in this sordid affair and points out that the circumvention of due process was in no way “justice.” It is worth taking a moment to click on the original newspaper report here or within the account linked above about the lynching of this 25 year old man. He pleaded for someone to pray for him before he was put to death. When someone did and asked him afterwards if he was penitent, he didn’t know what that word meant. When he then sputtered out this prayer on his own, repeating it over and over, Swaim was ridiculed by the crowd, a crowd that I’m sure was mostly filled with Christian men:

Oh Lord take me from this world once more!
Oh Lord save this poor sinner’s soul once more!
I know I am guilty, and oh Lord forgive this poor sinner his sins!

Swaim was hanged improperly, so he died of strangulation and, therefore, didn’t die immediately. The rope that was holding him by the neck had to be restrung over a limb on the tree to draw his body “high up above the heads” of the spectators. It remained there afterwards, and “great crowds” came to see it later that same day.

Lord, we pray for the one who preaches. For you know his sins are many. Amen.

As you came into the church this morning, there were probably a few things that caught your eye, like the brand new, bright yellow lines in the south parking lot and glorious sunflowers shining over the altar on both sides of the cross and festive t-shirts worn by many of our members who will be sent out at the end of worship in groups to serve our neighbors on Serve Sunday. Some of the shirts say “God Thinks You’re Fabulous,” which, for us, is another way of saying that we believe God looks at people, who’ve been created in his own image, with the eyes of Jesus and loves them. We are all forgiven, embraced, and accepted in the merciful arms of our Savior.

But there’s one other thing. Unless today is the very first time you’ve ever walked into this beautiful house of worship, you probably also noticed, and perhaps keep staring at, the baptismal font. That’s the impressive stone bowl on a pedestal where people, young and old, are baptized with water and adopted into the household of God. Yes, it has indeed been moved. That is the truth. The whole truth, however, is that it’s been moved back to where it used to be. So the balance between Water and Word, which is to say the font and the pulpit, has been restored at the front of the church. Now we’ll pass through both of those things that are constantly shaping our Christian life as we come to the Table in the middle to bless the bread and the wine for holy communion. I’ll say more about the baptismal font in a moment.

But, first, a story. The first ordained minister that I can remember at Union Cross Moravian Church in Forsyth County, North Carolina, wasn’t the one who baptized me as a baby but the pastor who followed him. He was the Rev. Edward T. Mickey, and we called him Mr. Mickey, in the same way that Episcopal priests used to be addressed universally in past generations in America. He was just as talented, if not more so, in the realm of music as he was well-read in the area of theology.

Mr. Mickey had once been the Pastor of Grace Moravian Church in Mount Airy, which is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And that’s where, on a Wednesday afternoon in 1942, he heard the sound of a bicycle come to a sliding, screeching stop at the back door of the church. Riding that bike was a 16 year old boy who saw Mr. Mickey sitting there on the back steps and wanted to know if he was the preacher. He said that he was. The teenager then asked Mr. Mickey if he could teach him how to play a trombone so that he could lead a swing band.

That teenager turned out to be the future actor Andy Griffith, who did learn all about music in that church — how to read it, how to play it, how to sing it. That was a real turning point in the life of Mr. Griffith, who would later major in music in college at Chapel Hill before the start a well-known career in entertainment.

I thought about that story when I read today’s assigned passage from the Letter to the Christians in Ephesus. Although a lot of people reduce these words to a lesson about the virtues of temperance, it’s not meant to forbid those who don’t struggle with addictions from enjoying a festive drink with a little pink umbrella atop the glass. That’s very different than orienting your life around the drunken orgies of the worship of Dionysius, the god of wine, in the Asiatic world of the ancient Ephesus.

In the letter that slowly made its way to that city, those Christians are simply being reminded that their community of faith ought to be oriented around something else, something that is life-giving not only for themselves but also for others:

. . . be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.[1]

And is it not here, within these walls, where we learn how to sing in the world? For us, that begins at this font, which the infant Jesus, being held in the arms of his mother, now overlooks and blesses. Can’t you hear, if only faintly, the song of his mother, the song of Mary? Out of the baptismal waters, her words become our own:

He hath showed strength with his arm;
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the humble and meek. . . .[2]

And when we go out these doors to serve others, it’s just an extension of singing this and other songs we’ve learned in one another’s presence. But it all begins, for us, at this font, and I love how the author and pastor Eugene Peterson describes that:

Baptism marks a radically new way to understand ourselves and one another: not by race, not by language, not by parents and family, not by politics, not by intelligence, not by gender, not by behavior. All of these various ways of accounting for ourselves are significant, but none is definitive. Holy baptism defines us as holy, as saints. Baptism is definitive . .

We continue to maintain this identity by keeping company with people who have firsthand knowledge of who we are . . . These same [men and women] embarrass us with their haphazardness, exhilarate us with their joy, offend us by their inconsistent lives, comfort us with their compassion, [badger] and criticize us, encourage and bring the best out of us, bore us with their blandness, stimulate us with their enthusiasm. But we don’t choose them. God chooses them. We keep company with the men and women God chooses. These saints.[3]

The font in a church ought to invite exploration, not be half-fenced off as ours often seemed like it was when it was in front of the pulpit. Now you can freely walk around the entire font. And so not only children are encouraged to come and do that but also adults. If you have little ones, lift them up so they can see with their own eyes the inside of the bowl. Then take a look at the symbols outside that basin and notice, in particular, the eight sides of the base. It’s important for that not to be obscured.

That octagonal shape was a symbol in early Christianity of the resurrection, with the Lord’s Day, Sunday, being not the first day of the week, as we usually think of it, but the eighth day of creation. It reminds us of a new creation, a new song, that began at the empty tomb on Easter morning and that begins, for us, at this font as people of all ages, from infants to the elderly, are baptized, bathed in forgiveness, washed lavishly in God’s grace, named publicly as God’s beloved children.

On Friday afternoon, as I was driving both of my boys to their music lessons, the radio in the car was tuned in to NPR and the first thing that I heard was the classical violinist Yo Yo Ma was being interviewed. Actually, what I heard first was him playing the gently rolling prelude to the first of Bach’s six Cello Suites. Mr. Ma started violin lessons at four years of age, and the first several notes of that prelude are what he learned on his first day. The next set of notes are what he learned on his second day, and so on and so forth. He learned all of it slowly, incrementally.

The music of Bach’s six Cello Suites have been his companion for the last 58 years. That music, like the Book of Psalms in the Bible, is, as NPR put it, “two-and-a-half hours of sounds that map humanity in all its triumphs, joys and sorrows.”[4] Mr. Ma has played that music at the weddings of his friends and also at their funerals. He played it after 9/11 and on very different kinds of celebratory and joyous occasions.

I think that’s a beautiful image of how we learn to sing the right notes throughout the different chapters of our lives, the lives of our loved ones, and the lives of our neighbors. And how could I speak of singing on this Lord’s Day without mentioning, with R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Aretha Franklin, who died on Thursday in the City of Detroit?

I loved this title of an article in the New York Times last week: ‘Amazing Grace’: How Aretha Franklin Took Us All to Church.[5] Her father was a Baptist minister, and, not surprisingly, she used to sing gospel music in his church. Although the Times piece was about a particular album called Amazing Grace, there’s something about the way Ms. Franklin sang that carried much of that out into the world, even if the words she was singing weren’t religious in any way, shape, or form. There was a sense that we were going to church. And when she sang at the Presidential Inauguration in 2009, she wore a magnificent hat, as though she had dressed for church on that day.

Now some of you are thinking to yourself, “I’m never going to be like Yo Yo Ma on the cello or the Queen of Soul with my voice,” even metaphorically. So I want to tell you the part of the story about Mr. Mickey and Andy Griffith that usually gets left out. In his own retelling of it, Mr. Mickey said he was sitting on the back steps of the church that afternoon in 1942 at what seemed like a real low point.[6] He had just finished his weekly band practice with his volunteer players, and they hadn’t practiced and didn’t seem very interested. And so he was feeling sorry for himself as he sat there.

In The Player: A Profile of an Art, which is a 1962 collection of reflections by actors, Mr. Griffith wrote these words:

For three years, he gave me a free lesson once a week. Ed Mickey taught me to sing and to read music and to play every brass instrument there was in the [church] band, and the guitar and the banjo besides. I was best at playing the E-flat alto horn.

When I was sixteen, I joined the church, together with my mother and daddy. . . . I was very happy with the Moravians. All the other band members accepted me. They didn’t ever make fun of me.[7]

Those lessons were mentioned in Andy Griffith’s obituary in The New York Times, along with the painful memory of having been called “white trash” as a child.[8] The band members at the church, including Mr. Mickey, embraced him with the love of Jesus. They showed him what the love of Jesus looks like in the world around us, what the love of Jesus looks like in our lives, not as we wish them to be, but as they really are. That’s the real music he was learning there — the music of divine love.

And that’s what each of us can share with others, the song that each of us, being filled with the Spirit, can sing in the world beyond these walls. . . today.

Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.

These words from David Lose, Pastor of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, have been on my mind. The invitation that he describes isn’t something limited to members of the clergy or professional church staff. It’s an invitation that you have the power to extend to a child of God . . . today:

Jesus’ whole life is centered on inviting into the presence of God those who neither expect nor deserve [that] invitation. And he expects us to do the same. He expects us, that is, to stop counting the costs, benefits, and rewards of our actions and live from a sense of abundance and blessing.

Counting. It’s so omnipresent in our lives that we almost forget it exists even as it exacts a tremendous toll on us. Whether we are counting the amount in our bank accounts or the opinions of our neighbors on what we wear or do, we are continually counting. Why? Because we live with the sure conviction that there is not enough. Not enough money, time, prestige, resources, recognition . . . you name it. And that conviction seems sure, even unquestionable, because so much in our culture – and particularly the advertisements we’re relentlessly subjected to – tell us there isn’t.

But what if there was? What if there was enough and more than enough to go around? What difference would that make in our own peace of mind and the way we treated others? . . . [Jesus is inviting us to] stop counting and start giving and blessing. . . . [What would it] be like to live into the freedom to stop calculating our social prestige and stop worrying about what others think and simply be kind to everyone around us, particularly those who are not often the recipients of kindness. What would it look like at work, at school, and at the places we volunteer or play sports or socialize, to look out for those who seem off to the margin and to invite them into the center by inviting them into our lives?

Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.

David Lose is Pastor of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, which is the largest Lutheran congregation in the United States and just down the road from my previous community of faith. I find these words of his about comparison, which I just ignored in my previous sentence, to be true for so many people that I meet:

One of the “life rules” I’ve adopted as I grow older . . . is that “no joy comes from comparisons.” Have you ever noticed that? Rather than be content with what you have or who you are or what you’ve accomplished, we so regularly look to those around us to decide whether it is enough based on what others have or are or have accomplished. I suspect this is part of being human – being animated by a deep-seated insecurity that makes it difficult for us to establish some sense of ourselves apart from an external reference. . . .

No joy comes from comparisons. Only envy and resentment and bitterness or, occasionally, a shallow and superficial pride because you’ve chosen to make yourself feel better by looking down on someone else. And not only do we not bring joy, but we unintentionally denigrate the actual present reality with which we have been blessed. . . . [D]o we take stock of what we think we deserve or of all the things we’ve been blessed by that we don’t deserve? Do we look for places in our lives characterized by lack and scarcity or do we name and give thanks for places of abundance. Do we reflect on what others have and we do not, or do we delight in the wonder of all that we have been given to which we had no guarantee or right to expect? Do we, in short, choose comparisons or do we choose joy?

Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.

A couple of years ago, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote a review for The New Statesman magazine of several books about violence, including Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Here’s part of that review, which I found to be profoundly thought-provoking as I consider my own place in this broken world and my relationship to others in that world as a follower of Jesus:

Again and again in Genesis, younger brothers overturn the legitimate expectations of older ones, and varying degrees of conflict result. At first sight, this reads as a catalogue of simple displacement, yet it becomes more interesting when we look at the verbal detail. Younger brothers discover that their privilege is to secure the future of older ones; or they discover that the blessing transferred to them from an older sibling is balanced by an unexpected blessing for the latter which benefits both. The trickster Jacob, when he next encounters Esau, the brother he has defrauded, says that to see his face is like seeing the face of God. In other words, the stories are not about favouritism and rejection, whatever the appearances: they are about the blessing of difference — the dignity of difference, to quote the title of one of Sacks’s best-known books. There is no firm ground for asserting that divine choice makes an enemy of those not chosen, because God’s choice is always purposeful, directed at a common good.

This reading is an ingenious and often moving turning upside down of a rhetoric of “chosenness” that has often blighted Christian as well as Jewish self-understanding, and has undoubtedly fuelled the anti-Semitism that Sacks rightly sees as resurgent in so many contexts today.

Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.

Paul Hooker is the Associate Dean for Ministerial Formation and Advanced Studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He recently authored three hymn verses as he thought about the hurricanes in Texas and Florida that have “drenched and torn the lives of so many [he loves].” Perhaps his words will speak to you as they have spoken to me:

In the wind that howls, the deep’ning dark, when rains begin to fall
and the hopes we cherish most in life are shrouded in their pall,
then at last we lift our vision; then at last we strain our ear
for the word of sweet deliv’rance: our rescuer draws near.
Teach us, Lord, to rescue others, and to find as we are found,
until all your people reach the shore and stand on higher ground.

O that you, O God, would tear the skies and to the earth descend
‘mid the trembling mountain’s tumult, ‘mid fear that knows no end.
Though the stars may leave their places, constellations cease to be,
though the world we know and all we love lost to memory,
still we wait, Lord, rapt in wonder, ‘til morning’s sun shall rise,
‘til the clouds are rent asunder, and the tear of heartache dries.

‘Til that day, before the table spread, the font, the spoken word
we will gather as a people and let lament be heard
for your promised reign of glory, for tomorrow’s dawn of peace,
for the helpless and the hopeless, the prisoner’s release.
Quickly come, Lord, to your people! The night grows e’er so long!
We believe; help now our unbelief, ‘til all our hearts are strong.

Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.

As I announced last Sunday and also explained in an email message to the congregation, Palmer hosted a free day camp this past week for children as a gift to the community in response to the fact that HISD schools delayed the beginning of the new academic year until tomorrow, September 11.

I want to thank Roger Hutchison, Director of Christian Formation and Parish Life, and a host of helpers from the church staff and church members who made this possible. There were more than a few tears shed by parents who were very grateful that we had created a safe place for their children to be.

Looking ahead, Palmer will be part of a coordinated relief system that has been created by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. There are now eight hub churches in the network: Palmer Memorial Church, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Martin’s Church, St. Mark’s Church, The Church of St. John the Divine, Holy Spirit Church, St. Francis Church, and Trinity Church. Christy Orman, whom you are welcome to contact directly at corman@christchurchcathedral.org, is the Hurricane Relief Coordinator for this network.

Additionally, each hub church has a Parish Hurricane Relief Coordinator. Betty Key has graciously accepted the invitation to fill that role for our community of faith with the help of a support team. Betty and her team will be Palmer’s conduit with Christy as our church becomes a platform to help with the management of restoration projects in the City of Houston for the weeks and months to come. You can contact them via stormsupport@palmerchurch.org, which is the same email address we’ve been using to receive updates about assisting our own parishioners.